June 1940 QST
Table of Contents
These articles are scanned and OCRed from old editions of the ARRL's
QST magazine. Here is a list of the QST articles I have already
posted. All copyrights are hereby acknowledged. |
Membership in the
American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is
currently $49.00 per year, and includes a subscription to its flagship publication, QST.
According to this postcard insert that I found in a June 1940 issue of QST, membership then was a
whopping $2.50, and it also included the magazine subscription. According to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics' online
Inflation Calculator, $2.50 in 1940 bought you what $43.04 buys in 2016. You
can't get much more consistent in holding costs to a consistent standard over a span of 76 years!
Working it backwards, the $49.00 membership fee in 2016 is the equivalent of $2.85 in 1940. The
comparative difference is a increase of a tad under 14%, but that pales in consideration of the
additional service provided nowadays.
BTW, postage for mailing a postcard in 1940 was a mere 2¢, and today is 34¢. In inflationary
terms, 2¢ in 1940 bought the same as 34¢ in 2016 - an exact equivalent! The U.S. Postal Service
earns an 'attaboy' for that one.
American Radio Relay League Postcard

Posted August 9, 2016
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